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I checked it out recently and the layers homogenized themselves and the tea settled out. Probably it was like a difference in specific gravity that equalized after I had siphoned a slightly different and much huger layer underneath. That means that it didn't ferment to full dryness tho. I guess I'll let em set for a while and periodically taste them before blending the jugs & bottling It didn't smell vinegary at all, just like honey, booze, and sort of grassy. I think it'll be alright. Tastes both sweet and bitter. I drank more of that weird burned batch I made and it's actually pretty good, just took a hell of a long time to mellow and smooth the flavors. Extremely bourbon tasting, thick and sweet without being cloying, little bit of maple and apple. Next time will be much less sitting on the wood I think. Probably ditch the maple if I burn the honey again.
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Jun 24, 2019 07:10
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 19:48 |
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Rhubarb wine! Highly floral and a bit tangy. Has a really interesting bitter vegetable taste at the end. We're back-sweetening to my wife's (very) sweet tastes so hopefully we'll get it in a bottle by the end of the week.
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Jun 26, 2019 06:11
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Hey SWC can you post your tea mead recipe? I'm going to be getting quite a bit of honey in the near future and would like to try it.
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Jun 26, 2019 21:57
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Honneur et Patrie 
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The French Army posted:Hey SWC can you post your tea mead recipe? I'm going to be getting quite a bit of honey in the near future and would like to try it. How much honey are we talking? Have you made Liquid Gold?
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Jun 26, 2019 22:19
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What i did was do a straight mead in my normal way, then rack it into secondary on top of tea powder. I hosed up tho: When I was racking I spilled some. I also didn't have enough jugs to rack the whole thing. What i did was rack one gallon into glass, then use 4 I think table spoons of ground macha. I remember thinking "huh the numbers say do 4.5138759, but this already looks like an insane poo poo load, I'm stopping" Actually I put the tea in first and put the mead on top. If you use powdered tea I think doing it this way will help a lot, otherwise you'll have clumps and tea dust up above the surface. Then like a week later I was finally able to rack the mead off the tea, then clean the jug and rack the remainder off of primary, then blend the portions. What i would do for the next batch is : Use loving metric if at all possible, especially with the tea instructions Have good vessels to do the whole thing in one shot Read the macha instructions again. Mine say something like a fraction of a tea spoon per 12oz. Scale this to the volume of the batch and this is only a starting point. Imo tea is front loaded with the more sweet flavors and back loaded with bitter ones. So I mean the longer you steep the more bitters you get. So depending on what you want use that huge amount from the instructions and let it steep for a very short time, or use less at a longer time. Mine used less (i think less than one half) than the calculations but was still bitter and grassy. I like it but using tea like this is going to be very time sensitive. Imo macha HAS to be done like this because it's a powder, you need to siphon off or filter it very finely Using other tea style you can just make some, ditch the leaves and blend into a normal batch. I think not using the actual alcohol will give you different possible flavors, not everything will be pulled with just water. I might be wrong and putting booze on tea will always pull the bitter part, idk. If you put the booze on the tea itself you'll want to taste it frequently and pull it off as soon as you're satisfied, imo. Like a day. Less? maybe two? It won't be BAD, but the process seems super fast compared to fermentation. A handful of days put it into somewhat bitter & grassy. Tasting it right now, it's too hot to be good. raw alcohol. Needs to age. But there is definitely a really interesting flavor that is like macha but different, then the hit of honey, then a bitter "extremely steeped ultra powerful tea" flavor. I think this will be a good mead for those brutally hot dog days. Macha is the kind where you drink the tea itself when you make it, probably this means it will steep much stronger than normal teas, you're not gonna be bullshitting around steeping it very long if you're drinking it normally.
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Jun 26, 2019 22:53
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Finally had enough free time to give this rhubarb wine thing a shot. Only found one recipe and I wasn't really happy with the process it described so I'm experimenting. I found a method of extracting rhubarb juice that just called for boiling the chopped rhubarb then letting it sit and separate. I think that's a waste of time and also would have tiny yields, so I've decided to boil the rhubarb, add water and sugar and then ferment it and let it separate in the carboy (hopefully). Boiled rhubarb:  I started off with something like 3 and a half big ziplocs full, enough to fill the pot all the way and then some. I only added maybe 0.5L of water to the pot to make sure the rhubarb didn't burn as I'd dumped it in frozen. It made a surprising amount of mash. I don't have the time nor money to invest in a fermentation bucket so I'm making a beefy loving airlock for the carboy which is going to be the primary fermentation vessel.  It was hard to get a good reading of potential alcohol because the thickness of the boiled rhubarb wasn't letting the hydrometer do its thing so I added a lot of sugar. I think there's 1kg of sugar in here. The rhubarb was sour as gently caress, and by the end of it I think I got a reading of about 14% potential alcohol but who knows, really. It seems to have worked though because almost exactly a half hour after I dumped the yeast in the mixture was bubbling away!  I managed to pick up more wine conditioner too, and that stuff seems to make all the particulate sink to the bottom. My plan is to ferment it, add campden tablets and conditioner before siphoning it off into another carboy hopefully leaving the gunk behind and then aging it for a while.
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Jul 7, 2019 01:00
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Oh man that's like when I tried doing bananas and it exploded I think you have a set up that will avoid this but watch out for foam overload. I think a steam juicer would basically solve this problem, be something good to have if you had a rhubarb farm or something, but maybe not ideal for a one shot. It seems like they work similarly to steam distillation but it's not worth that much storage space if you don't use it a couple times a year imo. If I ever end up with huge fruit yields I'm getting one to make booze for sure.
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Jul 7, 2019 03:40
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I learned the same lesson the hard way and I've made sure to make it failsafe. Everything in the carboy can pass through a hose 1/2 the diameter without problem and there's a ton of room at the top of the carboy. It's at peak foam now and I've still got about 6 or so inches of space before the carboy narrows. The airlock jar is pretty big so even if it bubbles over it shouldn't fill the jar up. Lastly, I've got it inside a cabinet so even if it goes the mess will be somewhat contained. I'll check in with pictures if it goes, though.
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Jul 7, 2019 03:55
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Basically mine went furious enough fermentation that it vomited pulpy foam that settled down into sticky juice You'll prob be fine and at worst it'll seep into the airlock I bet
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Jul 7, 2019 04:17
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Can you freeze and tumble it and distill some hobo liquor?
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Jul 7, 2019 10:49
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The yeast are having a loving hell of a time in the carboy, it's been humid and warm today and as of sunrise the fuckin things just took off About two hours after that pic, they were getting close to the top of the carboy  I had to pop the airlock and break up that yeast and fish as much out as I could. I wasn't able to get more than a tablespoon or two out but breaking up the mass helped. It's still bubbling away so I don't think I hosed it up.
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Jul 8, 2019 17:20
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I warned you about pith bro!!! I told you dog! I TOLD you man I told you about pith!
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Jul 8, 2019 18:34
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Scooping it out ended up being a pointless endeavor so I siphoned off the wine and dumped the yeasty mess out before putting the whole thing back into the carboy. It ended up foaming like mad overnight so I made a gigantic airlock out of a pot and all the foam seems to have worked its way out of the carboy finally. It's bubbling more than ever now though.
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Jul 10, 2019 00:04
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Did you sanitize everything that has come in contact with the fermenting wine?
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Jul 10, 2019 00:28
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It'll be fine, the extreme fermentation power will outcompete any contaminant
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Jul 10, 2019 00:44
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SniperWoreConverse posted:It'll be fine, the extreme fermentation power will outcompete any contaminant I guess if it's going to taste like anus vinegar it doesn't matter anyway.
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Jul 10, 2019 00:48
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Nah it'll be sweet hardy booze with a healthy tang
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Jul 10, 2019 00:52
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Ol' Zebulon Extra -- made the ~traditional way Peepaw spits in th' mash ta get 'er started! Look for the ZX
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Jul 10, 2019 00:56
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A Pack of Kobolds posted:Did you sanitize everything that has come in contact with the fermenting wine? Every time I pull the airlock I've got a container of sanitizing solution handy and clean everything including the countertops I'll be working on. I'm a little anal retentive in that regard. Honestly though there is for sure some wiggle room because the acidity due to alcohol content kills the really bad pathogens like botulism and if the thing goes moldy it'll be immediately apparent. The amount of offgassing going on right now is probably doing a pretty good job of keeping everything sealed.
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Jul 10, 2019 01:18
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autism ZX spectrum posted:Every time I pull the airlock I've got a container of sanitizing solution handy and clean everything including the countertops I'll be working on. I'm a little anal retentive in that regard. Honestly though there is for sure some wiggle room because the acidity due to alcohol content kills the really bad pathogens like botulism and if the thing goes moldy it'll be immediately apparent. The amount of offgassing going on right now is probably doing a pretty good job of keeping everything sealed. You're doing it right! There's nothing in there that would hurt you if anything did go wrong; I've just heard countless anecdotes of people messing up a batch of something because they spaced out and forgot to sanitize their wine thief or something like that. SniperWoreConverse posted:Ol' Zebulon Extra -- made the ~traditional way gently caress I keep forgetting that this isn't the make good, drinkable things thread. Have you considered making pruno the hard way?
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Jul 10, 2019 18:33
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I meant to update last week. So, I had to siphon off wine from the excessive amounts of yeast as I talked about. It was getting to the point I wasn't sure the thick yeasty mess would make it through my oversize airlock.  So like a complete loving idiot moron after siphoning off the wine I rinsed the carboy and dumped the mess into the sink. That was the last hurrah for the cast iron plumbing under the kitchen. It backed up under the sink at first, in the plastic portion. No biggie, snaked the trap from the sink side then I undid the cleanout and I heard something get suctioned further. I couldn't snake it with my bullshit snake so I got my plumber brother in law to come by. All the cast iron cleanouts were installed backwards and rusted shut, so we just replaced a good 15 feet of garbage pipe with new ABS stuff. It would have failed at some point anyway, I think... It bubbled away the rest of the week like this, a lot calmer and less yeasty  It stopped bubbling a few days ago so I siphoned it off into two 1 gallon carboys with some campden tablets and I'm aging them now. The colour was really neat right after siphoning 
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Jul 21, 2019 00:04
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rad. I mean not the pipes but the end result looks good. This is the dangers of fermenting on pith tho. What's it taste like, none of that weird "fibery" taste I hope. I resiphoned my tea mead again and it's more clear. It's a really deep dark amber color but in some lights from some angles it looks yellow or even green. Really weird effect. I haven't been able to capture a pic with a camera. It came out very powerfully tea flavored but not so much that it overwhelms the honey. The key to using it in this way is to keep the booze on it for brief amounts of time for sure. It's bitter, but not bad. Needs to mellow for a long time tho, has some stonk hot booze flavor to it that I hope will age out
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Jul 21, 2019 01:16
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It honestly tastes almost done. It's sweet, a little bit of tang and rhubarb flavor. Very minor carbonation. It's not at all like the apple wine at the same stage. The fibers have broken down and been siphoned off mostly, the ones that remain immediately sink to the bottom. I'll be really curious to see what it's like when it mellows because it's already at the point of a cheap dessert wine. Nowhere near the same alcohol content as the apple wine, though, and maybe that's part of it.
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Jul 21, 2019 02:29
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I went back to taste my last mead, the tea one, and it's pretty interesting it's bitter but "sweet" -- not like sugar but it has all the old flavors of honey that aren't the sugar portion. It tastes like it should be sweet but isn't. I would say this is probably one of my better batches, but also the one that would be best chilled. This is for sure a summer drink and is absolutely what I was shooting for. It's not "good" to randomly pick as something that will get u drunk, but it's what I wanted and I think it tastes pretty good and has the qualities I want. Just isn't "good" in the sense of going down and buying a 6 pack. It's def a weirdly different kinda drink and you will for sure be v drunk from it
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Aug 6, 2019 13:22
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after loving around with various kinds of filtering I have manhandled the tea mead into a hologram. I think there are a few ways to improve the effect and I plan on redoing this batch several different ways to make it taste better and look cooler https://i.imgur.com/A5xbWWK.gifv it's actually kinda hard to get a good vid of the look because there's def something really weird going on with the coloration and the camera doesn't pick it up extremely well, but it's different colors based on the angle and intensity of the light that's hitting it.
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Aug 10, 2019 20:01
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What's the best was of dividing a 5 gallon packet of yeast equally into 5 portions? Would doing it wet or dry have any potential pitfalls, especially in terms of consistent results?
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Aug 11, 2019 22:01
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Are you gonna use it all at once? Then you could probably dissolve it in a cup of water and split that 5 ways and it would probably be good enough. Or weigh it dry on a kitchen scale if you have one that's any good
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Aug 12, 2019 01:15
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now the way I think of it, the best way to do it would be to just brew the 5 gallons and cut that up into test batches
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Aug 12, 2019 01:23
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SniperWoreConverse posted:now the way I think of it, the best way to do it would be to just brew the 5 gallons and drink it in 5 glasses to see if it tastes better or worse as you get drunker.
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Aug 12, 2019 01:27
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So me and goon TheJunkCollector just did a first racking of 5 gallons of blackberry wine we bucketed a couple weeks ago. We also started another 5 gallons of blackberry cabernet. First batch had old yeast that didn't really kick off so he added some extra sugar after the first week. It got going pretty good but because of added sugar whatever initial specific gravity readings we had are moot. The one we started today was off a mystery kit. Does anyone have the calculation to figure out abv if you reduce volume then add sugar? We went from 6gal to 5gal which would have raised potential abv to 10.5 from the stated 9 in the kit. But after we added 4 cups of sugar, specific gravity came out to 1.075 which is slightly lower than what the manual said we should expect without adding sugar. Out of the box it should have been 1.08-1.1, so we're pretty confused largely since I'm not a math guy and "precise measurements" are kinda antethical to the idea of just wing it hobo wine. MC Hawking fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Aug 25, 2019 |
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Aug 25, 2019 23:44
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I drank almost all remaining reserves of hologram mead and I regret it deeply. Good for a pint? Yes. Good for two? Ok. After that you better just back off cause you can easily keep drinking and not realizing you're insanely shitfaced. That was the only time I ever got hung over from it and it was extremely, extremely bad. I woke up with almost everything I owned inexplicably moved around and all kinds of weird music tabs open and man. It's deceptive. Not strong enough to be booze but it's entirely wholesome when you drink it, not even like pounding brews or whatever. I dunno. It's different enough and strong enough there's nothing that tells you hey man you're trashed. Very weird kind of drunk, at least for me.
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Aug 26, 2019 00:14
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SniperWoreConverse posted:after loving around with various kinds of filtering I have manhandled the tea mead into a hologram. I think there are a few ways to improve the effect and I plan on redoing this batch several different ways to make it taste better and look cooler When i created this thread I would have bet a million bucks that none of you would come up with hologram tea-mead.
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Aug 26, 2019 00:58
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The Dregs posted:When i created this thread I would have bet a million bucks that none of you would come up with hologram tea-mead. That seems a bit harsh. Goons are allowed to dream big too, just like real people.
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Aug 26, 2019 01:03
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This thread inspired me to start homebrewing and I just got done bottling my first batch of cider. My local grocery store had pasteurized, unfiltered, organic apple juice on sale in glass bottles for $8 a gallon. I added some apple juice concentrate, malic acid, and wine tannins before pitching the yeast. Here they are before racking: https://imgur.com/a/zxElqv0 I probably screwed up the measurement but they measured at apx. 7% ABV before bottling. I left one gallon alone, one gallon I added 1 tbsp. of apple extract and 1/2 cup sugar in 8 oz. of filtered water, and the last gallon has 1/2 tbsp apple extract, 1 tbsp. raspberry extract, and 1/2 cup sugar in 8 oz. of water. The second one turned out the best but they're all delicious. https://imgur.com/a/PioFdfk https://imgur.com/a/rWhFzjf I'm going to start up a new batch of cider for sure and I'll be picking up a few 5 gallon carboys to try my hand at making fruit wines and mead.
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Sep 16, 2019 17:31
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Hi hobo wine thread. Me and TheJunkCollector out down ten gallons of blackberry wine a few months ago. We're about a month and a half to two months from bottling date. It went well and should be about 11% abv. 5gal is a fresh batch from concentrate. The other 5gal is a blackberry cabernet kit that'd been heat cycled but we wanted to do it anyway as an experiment. It smells super dry. Anyway this is my bump to keep this thread from hitting archives.
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Oct 3, 2019 03:47
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What's up thread, long time no see. I've been quiet, but not inactive. I put down several batches of wine over the summer, including a batch of peach wine that fermented on wild yeast and 3 gallons of mead that smells like barbecue sauce. But that's not why I'm here today. I was at an apple harvest festival last weekend and picked up a gallon of pure maple syrup. I intend to brew this into acerglyn. What's that you ask? It's mead, except instead of honey as the main fermentable it uses maple syrup. I'm planning to use the recipe found here. This is a spiced batch that I think will make an excellent winter drink. With as much syrup as I have, I'll be making a 5 gallon batch. Hopefully I'll be starting on Friday or Saturday, as soon as I can find a good local source for honey.
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Oct 8, 2019 21:34
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Hell yeah. You could also toast the honey some fist, then pour the water onto it to deglaze. That's obviously going to depend on what honey and what you wanna get tho
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Oct 8, 2019 21:46
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Toasted honey? Never heard of it. How do you toast honey?
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Oct 8, 2019 22:03
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I guess it's more caramelized. Some places do a "burned mead" bit they don't actually burn it. Dump the honey in a clean pot with nothing else. Do a low ish heat and simmer it. If you want you can do a double boiler type setup but I don't know that this is needed or even useful, I just stirred while direct heating. I'd say deff don't crank the heat up really high, you don't want it to splatter, just bubble and give up the water. Of course if even one drop gets on you you will fall directly into hell and be gruesomly bodily destroyed. It's safe to do but if the pot falls on a kid or pet or you dump it on yourself you'll permanently regret it. As it starts boiling it'll go thru phases like: "The house smells like honey" "The house smells like some kind of candy and the honey looks darker" "Ok it smells like some weird bad caramel and is for sure darker" "Ok it smells like it's super bad and ruined and is dark brown." "Open the windows. The honey is black." "Ok it's smoking not steaming I ruined it for real" It took me about 40 minutes to get it down to the point where it smelled bad. At this point I cut the heat and poured in a bunch of liquid, everything dissolved and there was no damage to the pot at all. I literally just had to rinse it out with hot water, not wash it hard or scrub. I was worried there'd be some burned bullshit fused to the bottom cause I had it direct on the flame but it was fine. You'd wanna get way down in there and gently pour the water, not dump it from high up cause you're scared it'll get on you. If you go smooth & easy & close the dissolving will be smooth and easy. I tasted the must at this point and it tasted really good, not bad at all. The instructions said go a full hour and imo it'd be totally fine, even though it really seems like you threw away a huge amount of honey. If it actually burns I'm pretty sure you'll know. When I did it I didn't even stir very much, just enough to keep it mostly homogenous. I think for my cider I'm going to boil down one of the gallons of unfiltered juice like this and see where it takes me.
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Oct 8, 2019 23:25
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 19:48 |
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Bochet is what they call it if they don't call it burnt. Deff mix in the water slow and easy if you do this.
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Oct 8, 2019 23:35
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